


“... logic limits love, which may be why Descartes never married.”

by notjustmom



Series: Tom Robbins Remix [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Tom Robbins, hospital fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 11:38:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14080083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjustmom/pseuds/notjustmom
Summary: Sherlock's version of their first kiss...





	“... logic limits love, which may be why Descartes never married.”

Love had always been that itch he couldn't scratch.  
The last bit of jam in the jar that he could never get to,  
the experiment that always failed no matter how many times he tried to make it work.

It wasn't logical.  
He couldn't outthink it, or outreason it.  
It wasn't a question with an answer, he couldn't observe it objectively and take it apart and put it back together, there were always pieces leftover that didn't quite fit. 

It simply was.

He was thirty-three and twenty-three days old when he looked up from his microscope and was left breathless for the first time in his life. Love had finally come knocking, and he nearly slammed the door shut, but for that tiny bit of hope, (hope. that was something else he never could wrap his mind around, but that's another story for another time) that let him take a breath so he didn't pass out. Hope let him see the smaller, blond man with a psychosomatic limp and the tremor as something more than a subject to study, and hope made him pause just long enough as he took the offered phone to gather his thoughts and he suddenly knew he needed the man who stood there waiting for - what, precisely? He could have been brutal, and taken love apart down to its very last atom, he might have turned love inside out and shaken it until love begged for mercy twice, but he lowered the drawbridge and let love in.

But love sometimes has plans of its own.

Sometimes love can't be rushed, can't be bought with dim sum or manhandled into showing its hand too early. Fear of the unknown occasionally rears its ugly head and waits. Waits for that moment when love could disappear altogether before it even begins. Love sometimes waits for that dark, moonless alley where death competes for the spotlight. When love takes one more chance to rewrite the story against all logic and reason.

 

"John?" Sherlock opened his eyes as he felt John take his hand. He thought he had heard the magic words, but he wanted to be sure.

"Yeah. It's me." He had been awake for two days already and he could barely keep his eyes open, hadn't shaved or showered, and he was still wearing the same clothes - hadn't been home, had stayed with him.

"Say it again." He needed to be sure, though he didn't want to push it, in case John wasn't sure -

"What?" He sniffed and held on to Sherlock's hand a bit tighter, as if he would slip away somehow.

"That thing you just said." His own voice sounded oddly muffled, as if he was under water, or in a bubble.

"I love you?" Yes, that, exactly what that meant - he couldn't tell, still, he wanted the words, he wanted to wrap himself in them, small as they were.

He heard himself whisper, "not what I thought it would be like." And he desperately wanted to take the words back, but couldn't, he didn't really know what he meant, maybe it was the drugs, or he was simply trying to work out why it had taken them months to get here, this moment.

"What?" John looked puzzled, then his features cleared as if he understood something Sherlock never would.

"I thought it would be harder -" He forced his eyes to stay open, though the drugs were starting to take over.

"Harder?" John almost chuckled. Sherlock could see the corner of his mouth nearly turn up into a slight grin, but even his lips were too tired.

He cleared his throat and tried to make himself understood. "You know, the silly romantic claptrap, the dinners, the poetry, flowers - no, not flowers, the wooing bit, wasn't sure how to go about doing that - all I had to do was -" and he couldn't go on. Love had waited until the very last minute, had moved him just enough or shifted the trajectory of the bullet - he had to believe that, not that he believed in much, but he knew, logic couldn't change his mind.

John finished the thought for him, even though Sherlock could hear how it hurt him to do so. "Nearly die in my arms for me to get my head out of my arse."

"Not entirely your fault -" God, he should stop talking, but he needed to be sure that John would stay, that he wasn't in the midst of a really strange, but oddly excellent dream, he could do without the extra holes, but, one can't be too picky, he supposed.

"No?" John almost laughed again then, but exhaustion was taking over, and Sherlock knew he was running out of time.

"Will you stay for a little while? I know you don't like hospitals, but, I'm a bit afraid of the shadows in here -" He hated to ask for anything, but he knew he was crossing over into something new, and taking John by the hand with him, or John was taking him - he wasn't quite sure, but he knew he wasn't alone anymore as he let the darkness take him finally.

John kissed his hand once more, then gingerly placed it back under the covers, and closed his eyes. "Not going anywhere, Bee, promise."

 

"Bee?"

"Hmm, what?" John rubbed his eyes and put his unsipped coffee down.

"You called me Bee this morning." Sherlock mumbled hoarsely as he tried to sit up before he remembered where he was and why. 

"Don't move, let me help, hmm? Is Bee okay, if it's not -"

Sherlock looked up at John, still unshaven and unshowered, but a slight smile had made it to his eyes. "It's perfect." He bit his lip and cleared his throat, about to ask John if he would mind -

"Can I kiss you, it's not where I imagined our first kiss would be - but if I don't kiss you soon -"

Sherlock opened his mouth to answer in the affirmative, but found every language he had ever learned had grown wings and flown at the moment he needed his words the most, so all he could do was nod carefully and close his eyes as John's trembling fingers found their way into his curls and his mouth made a slow but determined journey to his own dry, cracked lips, but love didn't seem to mind too much.


End file.
